Forum Updates šŸ“¢

Discourse 2.0 is coming shortly to this forumā€¦ for those interested, the following link provides some detail about whatā€™s coming:

We are now running Discourse 2.0, enjoy!

Forum upgraded to Discourse 2.1 / to read more about what this brings for you, read the below article by the makers of Discourse:

So weā€™re now on 2.2, which brings a lot of under-the-hood updates (it also broke a few things, images mostly, some things are still being fixed while youā€™re reading this)ā€¦ for those interested in what it is, their product blog has the details:

On the top right corner of the screen, next to your user icon, I also updated some of the essential quick-access icons.

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Stumbled across a massive (actually tiny) problem with the forum that turned out to be the reason most folks donā€™t even get email notifications from the SWDb forum (including password reset emails and such). This is fixed now and should lead to a lot more folks getting a lot more emails

We do want to remind everyone of the Signpost

It includes a lot of tips and tricks, but also the important links to the community guidelines and FAQ. I am happy to say that the instances where SWDb staff have to moderate or mediate in arguments etc. are very very few, but every now and then we do hear of improper conduct, or situations where forum members engage in less than friendly interaction. We encourage everyone to be adults and keep up the great community spirit that we have. Thank you, and please let me know if there are any specific tips and tricks that should be explained, or any aspects of our community rules that need to be clarified.

Latest version of the forum software now supports

  • tabbed user menu interface
  • more and cooler emojis
  • more flexible URL insertion dialogue in the editor
  • polls now have a pie chart option
  • splitting and merging topics now gives better control over what is being bumped or marked as read

Tons of other improvements, read more:

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Alright, I love it when the underlying tech that powers this forum makes some bigger steps, and the 2.5 update brings some really neat things. This update has already been applied to this forum. Here are some of the things new for us all to enjoy:

  • You will be able to add timed reminders and descriptions to your bookmarks
  • Multiple users can be invited at once with an invite link (that you can for example post on social media somewhere)
  • The forum will finally support multiple email adreses per account! And user accounts can also be merged more easily.
  • The forum will natively support and adapt to your timezone
  • Certain posts/topics will be able to transform into static web pages
  • Automatic reply deletion (useful in wiki topics, which we dont really use at the moment)
  • IE11 support dropped. Get a better browser, folks. Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi, Edgeā€¦ etc.
  • Tags have permalinks
  • Reddit and Facebook videos get proper onebox embeds

And tons more, read the entire announcement by the Discourse team:

I am in the progress of optimizing some things here in the forum, including (but not limited to):

  • there are no more sub-categories in the international category of the forum. Instead, we can tag posts with their language
  • I am testing an alternative way to implement a newsletter, you might have seen that topic
  • I am playing around with an option to let everyone blog right here in the forum, that section will have a slightly different look as well
  • Accessing tags is now back on the main horizontal menu
  • The two SWDb-related categories of the forum will likely be rolled into one, still looking for a cool SW-sounding name, Sheriffā€™s Office is a bit too long. Ideas?
  • The main, most active members that donā€™t already have accounts for the SWDb, will likely be approached by me for getting thoseā€¦

More to come

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I also managed to assign little flags to them, to make them more visible. This is purely illustrative, of course it would be possible to be very exact with which flag for which language.

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So, there is now only one category left with site related stuff and I will clean that one up a bit so it becomes more helpful. The (hidden) staff room is also in there.

The Newsletter category (our test) is a subsection of the new Magazine category (which is also a test).

The international section now has no more sub categories, so discussions arenā€™t too isolated from each other.

The loung that you didnā€™t know existed because you will need to earn trust level 3 before seeing it, is also still thereā€¦

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Done with most of the category cleanup at least. Looks easier now

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There is a global Google outage. As we rely on Google for some (not all) of the email-based communication of the forum, you might currently for example not be able to reply by email.

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New on the SWDb:

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Step by step guide on how to change the forum language:

  1. Go to your user avatar in the top right corner of the screen
  2. Click the little preferences icon (all the way to the right)
  3. Click preferences
  4. On the left, click interface
  5. Select interface language
  6. Click Save
  7. Refresh browser or go to the main screen of the forum.
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The forumā€™s software will shortly be upgraded (you might not notice it), and in the following article you will find some information about whatā€™s going to be new and better:

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Forum topics on specific movies are now easier to spot as I gave that category a little icon :slight_smile:

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Shortly, this forum will also be upgraded to ā€œDiscourse 3.0ā€, which you can read about in more depth, here:

Now, while weā€™ll have access to all the functionality outline therein, I am not planning on going along with all of it. For example, weā€™ll keep the current layout of this forum, the sidebar (for now at least) just complicates the otherwise rather clean appearance of the discussions. I am going to test out the chat with a few people before we might activate this for all. But since there is only a small number of users online simultanously at any given time, this may not be a useful feature for the SWDb. The user tips are pretty neat, and so is the revamped notifications menu.

I activated the new user menu (top right corner of the forum underneath your avatar image). There youā€™ll find all notifications, grouped by type (likes, replies, messages, etc.).
Also check out how powerful search has become, which also has an advanced mode. Try finding users, topics in specific categories and so on.
Weā€™re still checking out a sidebar mode and the chat option, so thatā€™s not yet activeā€¦

Update: We have also activated an experimental ā€œdark modeā€ which you can a) toggle on and off from the menu at the top right corner, and b) should activate automatically depending on the status of your browser or operating system.

Also new: bit by bit, @QuickDraw and I are going to bring movie polls back. These will be located (as they used to be, and in some cases still are) in the very first post of a movie topic.

You can always create your own polls from within any post, using the top right icon of the editing window that opens some additional options.

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